Yeah, "Zaxxon 2007" was also the first thing I thought first - before getting sucked in by the thousand little things that happen.

I like it. I must admit that this demo would probably never ever work in a "normal" demo compo, but perhaps we're starting to see the one advantage of that Intel compo here - you don't have to cater to a few hundred drunk entertainment-addicted people's hunger for sensation. And that's good.

that is about right, including the isometric engine, the events and all modelling. Making the map (the bitmap that controlls which objects will appear where - it is in 'textures' directory ) took a while more as it needed a bit of finetuning...

half the screen was garbled,
after a drivers update it went away
the framerate is still kinda too low, specially in the end of the demo.. wondering if there is something wrong with my machine.
anyways, nice demo.

there are two .exe can you try the other one and see if that makes a difference? what is your system ?

btw this is the first ASD demo that supports all resolutions that the card can handle and does FSAA - I realise how much better it would be if, for example, iconoclast could do that but it is too late now :-).

bigcheese. the lyrics were voiced by a native english (oh well american) speaker (that would be DJ Jules of Split Infinity Radio). Of course the context of the lyrics is irrelevant as kb has already noticed =P

In the lyrics there are 21 group greets. Can you spot them all? I'll give you the first one since it's a greek one.. "Psyche" (Ψυχές)..

Excellent. There are so many neat ideas. The idea for greetings is really nice. I like the part when a girl is saying "... and this is what I've become". The blobby shape similar to football stadium reminds me of the last scenes from "Akira". This Intel competition is afterall a nice alternative to other compos. You can vote when you're thinking with 6% of your brain and not 0.06% :D. I'm waiting for the rest of demos

Within the walls of Eryx is one of my favourite Lovecraft stories, in which a spaceman is trapped inside a labyrinth with invisible walls. The whole story takes place in Venus and there are plenty of references to alien civilizations and other weird things.

When I read the story it reminded me of one of my favourite games on C64 called 'Scarabaeus' made by a company called Andromeda (coincidence?), in which the character is trapped inside a pyramid in space. I made the connection between the two (the story and that claustrophobic game, especially the artwork on its cover) and thought 'one day these two must be made into a demo'.

I think that this demo captures the feeling of hopelessness and futility that I got from reading the story and playing the game. It follows a journey into what seems to be three different linked worlds: antiquity, the stone-cold old-mainframe platform, and finally the boss level, with all organic elements swirling and moving around. I always wondered as a child what is there after the end boss screens? Well I give my answer now: after the boss screen there is a singularity. The lines are the breaking of time and space and so the demo unfolds and ends. No salvation, no hope, no lament.

... also a few know that Andromeda was a Hungarian development company :)

I watched a demo and well... I think it's a great concept, but fails to be as long as it would need to be. It kinda feels like a teaser trailer to a real demo... The greetings idea was spectacular, while, alas, the rest of the music was not...

Here are the lyrics for the parts that are not really clear. Don't try to find any poetic value in there =P (or well if you're all about it.. be my guest)

I reach out my arms for the pole bolstered to my cerebrum, supporting my psyche in accord to the oblivious effects of color intoxication.
A look in the construct I call my being reveals what once used to be self sufficient, now corrupt from an explosive reaction and an extravagant tendency to entropy.
At times I crave to breach my cocoon and ascend like a wish to the constellation of Andromeda to watch over the world through eyes of plastic comprehending the cosmos in values of red, green, blue and transparent.
Right here on the threshold of God, I still await for the judgment of light that is fair and translucent, free from the torturing thoughts of conspiracy theories but all I come up with are mountains of synaesthetic metaphors.
I drift on the stardust like an automobile that has lost grip and traction on slippery tarmac and wonder, who will be enduring the burden of mopping the dust in the belt of orion this week..
I've been feeling like a wizard that's gone mad and narcoleptic on an escape route paved with leaves of a black lotus and sketches of melons for I never thought I'd exceed Ulysses expectations and reach the island of the cyclops, now unleashing new media propaganda.
Right here I stand on top of the walls of Eryx imbued by the cursed blessing of alien prophets to spend an eternity watching my life force being consumed by wireframe aparitions.
I was set upon this world to try and outtrack you but this is what I've become.

amusic:
ah, yeah. I meant that the use of a voiceover made me a bit uncomfortable. This kind of voiceover generally sounds cool to me in a foreign language, but if it's in my own, I like it to be more heavily processed/distorted so I don't get distracted by it :)

just to clarify that this demo doesn't use any shaders or really needs ps2.0. However, it was based on my usual ps2.0 platform. So, you ask, why didn't you take the cg and ps2.0 dependencies out of there, like you did with lithography (our first demo for intel compo 2006, which could run even on TNT2).

Well the answer is that it took me quite a while back then to write a non-ps2 version on top of the ps2 one, and all for what? So that people would vote for it based on a very compressed mpeg. So all my troubles were for nothing, as the recorded demo could have originally ran on a supercomputer for all we care.

Well, this is a little protest. Demos should not be treated as mpeg animations on a 320x240 window... And yeah yeah I know EP and divx etc. etc... :-))

When I watched this demo I was sitting in front of my laptop with my mouth open for 3 minutes and 8 seconds.

By now I watched it about 10 times or even more. Its so creative, the music is just... wow (Lyrics please! ^^) and the nostalgic part does the rest.
I especially like the part when the music turns airless and the cam changes direction.

Well.. I've watched a few more times. And I think it's almost great, but not quite. The ideas, style, and the tune are all top notch, but I think the execution lets it down slightly. E.g. the columns at the start are a little glitchy, and sometimes objects move through each other.

ASD, you guys just keep amazing me! Yet another high-standard demo with a new twist and a different angle. I love the idea, the execution, the combination of visuals and soundtrack, and simply pretty much everything in this one.

Nice work, but.. singularity at the end?
You must be aware that this is not emotional or strange at all. And you are trying to define undefined.. any reason for that ?
Why not at the end just show this little yellow dwarf with 4 hands that is rotating those spinning wheels ? Come'on guys - don't you have any sense of humor ? : P

I have a challange to all those leading demo groups (especially FB,ASD,Plastic): if your next demo will end up with something silly and simple as that... you will have to watch my new demo/intro and your brains will explode / turn into noise (or singularity or whatever) afterwards instead ;) !

great creative shit, shows that asd is capable of variety. very smooth and organic despite restricting to pure wireframe, which actually provides a nice kick. as a "normal" texturized demo this would have been mighty bland and boring looking. some people seem to be hugely retarded in having severe fobias related to "old" looking stuff. get over it.

bigcheese. the lyrics were voiced by a native english (oh well american) speaker (that would be DJ Jules of Split Infinity Radio). Of course the context of the lyrics is irrelevant as kb has already noticed =P

In the lyrics there are 21 group greets. Can you spot them all? I'll give you the first one since it's a greek one.. "Psyche" (Ψυχές)..

Anyway, very nice demo right down to the soundtrack and the flock of ideas harvested in this one - tho I am also getting quite tired of seeing wireframes.
Also I'd like to see stuff like this developed with more time and effort instead of those Asm-vote-gatherers :)

This is a great, semi-alternative, production, and it has a great sense of art to it, in my opinion. I don't know where the lyrics come from, but they are fascinating. The style makes me think of a 2nd generation cracktro scroller, but it show very much potential and I would like to see it employed in more demos.

chemist: I wrote the lyrics on top of my mind. Basically it's utter gibberish made for the sole purpose of surrounding the names of the groups that we greet in there. Although reading those again I get some sentiments of a "mental suicide", they're just random words.

I reach out my arms for the pole bolstered to my cerebrum, supporting my psyche in accord to the oblivious effects of color intoxication.
A look in the construct I call my being reveals what once used to be self sufficient, now corrupt from an explosive reaction and an extravagant tendency to entropy.
At times I crave to breach my cocoon and ascend like a wish to the constellation of Andromeda to watch over the world through eyes of plastic comprehending the cosmos in values of red, green, blue and transparent.
Right here on the threshold of God, I still await for the judgment of light that is fair and translucent, free from the torturing thoughts of conspiracy theories but all I come up with are mountains of synaesthetic metaphors.
I drift on the stardust like an automobile that has lost grip and traction on slippery tarmac and wonder, who will be enduring the burden of mopping the dust in the belt of orion this week..
I've been feeling like a wizard that's gone mad and narcoleptic on an escape route paved with leaves of a black lotus and sketches of melons for I never thought I'd exceed Ulysses expectations and reach the island of the cyclops, now unleashing new media propaganda.
Right here I stand on top of the walls of Eryx imbued by the cursed blessing of alien prophets to spend an eternity watching my life force being consumed by wireframe aparitions.
I was set upon this world to try and outtrack you but this is what I've become.

I reach out my arms for the pole bolstered to my cerebrum, supporting my psyche in accord to the oblivious effects of color intoxication.
A look in the construct I call my being reveals what once used to be self sufficient, now corrupt from an explosive reaction and an extravagant tendency to entropy.
At times I crave to breach my cocoon and ascend like a wish to the constellation of Andromeda to watch over the world through eyes of plastic comprehending the cosmos in values of red, green, blue and transparent.
Right here on the threshold of God, I still await for the judgment of light that is fair and translucent, free from the torturing thoughts of conspiracy theories but all I come up with are mountains of synaesthetic metaphors.
I drift on the stardust like an automobile that has lost grip and traction on slippery tarmac and wonder, who will be enduring the burden of mopping the dust in the belt of orion this week..
I've been feeling like a wizard that's gone mad and narcoleptic on an escape route paved with leaves of a black lotus and sketches of melons for I never thought I'd exceed Ulysses expectations and reach the island of the cyclops, now unleashing new media propaganda.
Right here I stand on top of the walls of Eryx imbued by the cursed blessing of alien prophets to spend an eternity watching my life force being consumed by wireframe aparitions.
I was set upon this world to try and outtrack you but this is what I've become.

That's 22 - I'm not sure about color, but I can't figure out where Farbrausch or XPLSV would fit.

after having watched it several timeZ in different m00dZ i have to say.:

+ very nice concept.!
+ the music fitZ it perfeCt in my earZ.! (PLUS the greetZ :) )
+ Hidden-Line-Vectorz instead of Wireframe (or just a black teXture.?!!)
+ many objeCtz with different behaviourZ.!
(there´s more work in that shorty than many would expeCt ;) )
+ a lot of thingZ to disCover while (((re-)re-)re-)rewatching.!
Xtra+ read Navis Comment on the concept somewhere up there ^^

- some bits too short...in length of tha deMo that is.!
- cocoon is greeteD,but it´s NOT ME who is meant.! NAAAHHH,jokin´;) forget about THAT minus :))

a deMo i kan show every1 never-got-in-touch-with-the-demoscene-ever-before.!
(they just have to have played some isometric stuff on c64 f.e. once...lol)

Great idea, very well done, ASD's outstanding work as usual. :)
Thank you, guys : because of you, I re-read Lovecraft's "Walls of Eryx", and with Amusic's scores as a background, it was simply _immersive_. I then proceeded, and read "The Mountains of Madness" with the tracks taken from Lifeforce, Planet Risk, Animal Attraction, Evolution of Vision, Eon, and such. It was one of my most powerful reading experiences, because the music echoed the stories with the exact classical / outlandish ratio required to fit a Lovecraft novel. I strongly recommand you try it at home too. :)

Brilliant work ASD, the cryptic lyrics totally mystified me and I had an inkling that it might be greets - what an awesome way to do greets!!
Really nice ancient+cyber feeling overall. It made me read the lovecraft too, wicked inspiration. fully rulez!